r's chimney and bins and kneading-tubs.
Verily one may observe the souls of some men confined to their bodies,
as to a house of correction, barely to do the drudgery and to serve the
necessities thereof. It was our own case but even now. While we minded
our meat and our bellies, we had neither eyes to see nor ears to
hear; but now the table is taken away, we are free to discourse among
ourselves and to enjoy one another; and now our bellies are full, we
have nothing else to do or care for. And if this condition and state
wherein we at present are would last our whole life, we having no wants
to fear nor riches to covet (for a desire of superfluities attends a
desire of necessaries), would not our lives be much more comfortable and
life itself much more desirable?

Yea, but Cleodemus stiffly maintains the necessity of eating and
drinking, else we shall need tables and cups, and shall not be able to
offer sacrifice to Ceres and Proserpina. By a parity of reason there
is a necessity there should be contentions and wars, that men may have
bulwarks and citadels and fortifications by land, fleets and navies
abroad at sea, and that having slain hundreds, we may offer Hecatombs
after the Messenian manner. By this reason we shall find men grudging
their own health, for (they will say) there will be no need of down
or feather beds unless they are sick; and so those healing gods,
and particularly Esculapius, will be vast sufferers, for they will
infallibly lose so many fat and rich sacrifices yearly. Nay, the art of
chirurgery will perish, and all those ingenious instruments that have
been invented for the cure of man will lie by useless and insignificant.
And what great difference is there between this and that? For meat is
a medicine against hunger, and such as use a constant diet are said
to cure themselves,--I mean such as use meat not for wantonness but of
necessity. For it is plain, the prejudices we receive by feeding far
surmount the pleasures. And the enjoyment of eating fills a very small
place in our bodies and very little time. But why should I trouble you
or myself with a catalogue of the many vexations which attend that man
who is necessitated to provide for a family, and the many difficulties
which distract him in his undertaking? For my part, I verily believe
Homer had an eye to this very thing, when, to prove the immortality of
the gods, he made use of this very argument, that they were such because
they used no v